Sunday, 12 August 2012

London The Modern Babylon: BabyLondon

London: The Modern Babylon is a two-hour documentary from director Julien Temple about the city of London in which he tries to explain the culture and the history of his city.

London: The Modern Babylon is an upbeat celebration of a city where over 40 per cent of the population are now non-British, and over 300 languages are spoken.

London has always been a vortex of changing social and racial identity – one of the liveliest places on earth.

The film takes us chronologically from the First World War and the 1920s explosion of neon through the bleak 1930s and the Blitz, with its "jaunty behaviour" and the greyness of the 1950s and 1960s, at last infused with colour by pop (the sparkle was only superficial, argues bubble-bursting Ray Davies: "The only thing swinging in London was handbags").

Through it all, successive waves of immigration add new notes to the cultural register.

Temple has made a collage, mixing film archive material and popular music with the voices of Londoners past and present, from musicians, writers and artists, to political radicals and ordinary people, to create a picture of the capital's changing face.

He also has explored the city’s social and economic divisions, terrorist bombs and violent street riots.

He pays unequivocal homage to successive waves of incoming immigrants who have reshaped and revitalised London -- from Jewish to Irish, Caribbean to Indian - but not without pausing to show the ugly racial tensions they often faced.

Visually brilliant, through this documentary you can explore and understand the real London.

On the soundtrack, the Pistols and the Kinks, of course, but also Marie Lloyd, Laurel Aitken and that hero of hardcore, Max Bygraves.